ScreenWize

There have been cries, in this the 50th anniversary year of the Australian Film Institute (AFI), that it hasn’t been a very good year for the Australian film industry, and if box-office is the measure you use to judge success, then something is clearly amiss. The combined takings for the four Australian films nominated in the Best Film category at the 2008 AFI awards ceremony (The Black Balloon, The Jammed, The Square and Unfinished Sky) add up to less than the gross box-office for the Australian run of Beverly Hills Chihuahua. The Australian film industry’s bite is a great deal less than its bark.

Alan Finney, Board member of the AFI, and a film producer who’s been around since the re-birth of Australian film in the 1970’s, has heard it all before. “Whenever people say the industry is going through hard times, I remind them that when I started we didn’t have an industry. It was British films that were made here.” Indeed, there were so few Australian feature films made fifty years ago that the AFI’s category of “Best Film” included documentaries and non-features until 1975. In the first year the awards took place – at the 1958 Melbourne Film Festival – Best Film was won by Conquest of the Rivers, a promotional film sponsored by the Snowy Hydro Electric Authority. Three years later, there were so few films made in Australia that no prize was given at all. This trend - a dire reflection of the failure of governments to support the industry and a lack of collective cultural confidence - continued throughout the sixties, and it took eleven years before a feature film won the Best Film category. That was in 1969, when a young Phillip Adams took out the category with Jack and Jill: a Postscript. Then followed what has become known as the Australian film renaissance, with AFI award winners in the 1970’s including such films as Stork, The Devils Playground and Sunday Too Far Away.

For Finney, who helped to produce the Alvin Purple films (and who starred in them as well), these were exciting times. “It was a vibrant filmmaking community at the time, full of people who just got out and made films.” But these pioneers of the new-look domestic film industry were confronted by the same key difficulty that existing Australian filmmakers have – getting the final product in front of an audience. “A lot of people forget that what we had to do in those days – what Phillip Adams did with Barry Mackenzie, what John Murray did with The Naked Bunyip and what Tim Burstall did with Stork - was to mortgage the house and hire cinemas themselves. It was called four-walling, and it was the only way to get the films shown.” Things haven’t changed much. One of this year’s finalists - The Jammed (which has already won a swag of industry awards) - nearly didn’t get a theatrical release in Australia such is the lack of interest by major distributors in Australian movies.

Finney feels strongly that Australian films have to connect with their own audience, rather than be made to appeal to a mass market overseas. “When I talk to filmmakers in Europe they say the same kinds of things as we do about box-office and the difficulty of competing against American movies. But in Australia, it’s even harder because we don’t have the protection of a completely separate culture - or a separate language – and we don’t have a quota for our industry. If you are making films in France, it’s a lot easier to differentiate your product in your own country. Not so here. We have to find a way to differentiate our product by making them distinctly Australian – that’s very crucial. Why on earth would you take on the international filmmakers at their own game? It’s very difficult – unless you’re Baz Luhrmann perhaps - to match them for budget or stars.”

The Australian stars will be out to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the AFI tonight. With actor Stephen Curry hosting the televised event, actors nominated for awards in Australian films include Guy Pearce, Toni Collette, Emma Lung, Noni Hazlehurst and William McInnes. The line up for nominees in the two awards given to Australian actors in international films also tells a tale about about the strength of the industry’s talent: nominated for Best Actress are Cate Blanchett, Judy Davis, Racheal Griffith and Nicole Kidman, whilst the award for Best Actor will go to one of Eric Bana, Russell Crowe, Heath Ledger and Jack Thompson. Talent is clearly not a problem.

Finney thinks we all need to reflect on the nature of the industry, and remember that it’s a high-risk affair. “I work for a film distribution company and I know that eight out of ten films wont work, and that it’s the other two that pay for the losses. No-one sits down and says ‘how many disasters can we make this year?’’

Despite the risks, he’s optimistic about the next fifty years. “The diversity of films and people that have won AFI awards over the years is great, and it will continue”, he says, “we have a healthy creative pool of young and emerging filmmakers who are just going out with digital equipment and making features. In addition some of the best-known and most experienced people – like Jan Chapman, Bruce Beresford, and Fred Schepsi – are still making films here. We should be proud of the industry, and proud of any organisation that has lasted fifty years in it.”

Filed Under: Interviews by Simon